


sing me a smile (I've forgotten the sound)

by ThisUsernameTaken



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Longest thing I´ve ever written, Unreliable Narrator, maybe infinity war spoilers, no seriously, this was supposed to be fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-06-30 13:05:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15752262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisUsernameTaken/pseuds/ThisUsernameTaken
Summary: If you were to ask Tony about Pepper's smile, he'd give you one of his own, small and utterly besotted."It's- it's like watching the sun rise."Or;"You know, when you're sitting on the grass, and the wind is blowing, and the sunlight filters through the leaves? It's a bit like that. It's- life is good."Maybe after a long mission, brutal and leaving you all tired, so tired. His eyes would flick to yours, exhausted, vulnerable.He's quiet a moment, the masks still on, his face-plate up.It's hushed, a barely there of a whisper."It's like coming home."Then comes the rest.





	sing me a smile (I've forgotten the sound)

**Author's Note:**

> This has taken me literal hours and days and I love it so.

If you were to ask Tony about Pepper's smile, he'd give you one of his own, small and utterly besotted.   
  
"It's- it's like watching the sun rise."   
  
Or; "You know, when you're sitting on the grass, and the wind is blowing, and the sunlight filters through the leaves? It's a bit like that. It's- life is good."   
  
Maybe after a long mission, brutal and leaving you all tired, so tired. His eyes would flick to yours, exhausted, vulnerable.   
He's quiet a moment, the masks still on, his face-plate up.   
  


It's hushed, a barely there of a whisper.

"It's like coming home."   
And that's that.   
  
Then comes the rest.

He flies, he falls, he gets back up and soars, encased in the armor. Enveloped in a shield.   
  
He makes more of them, the suits. All built to withstand vibranium, and beyond.   
  
They all fail.   
  
Tony flies into space; falls outs of it. Malibu crumbles into the sea.

Pepper falls. Tony flies to catch her, and doesn’t. 

ULTRON flies. JARVIS falls. Down we spiral, deeper, faster.   
  
Tony stops smiling. You stop asking.   
  
Pepper smiles at him, one more time before she leaves. It's the echo of past happiness, the edge of maybe. It's goodbye.   
  
You figured that one out for yourself, you think, prying the bottle of scotch out of his hands and directing him to bed. You smooth the sheets down once, before you go, but he grabs your hand, grip tight. You both know how easily you could break it, if you wanted to.   
  
You stay, and he rasps, "you don't have to do this."   
  
You stay, and you tell him, "I know."   
  
He smiles at you then, watery and blurred with grief, eyes screaming more than he'll ever say.   
You squeeze his hand. He squeezes back.   
It's the first time he's smiled outside the flash of a camera in weeks.   
  
You wake to stiff joints and pale, brilliant dawn. The bed is empty, the sheets tucked around you.   
  
It's a long time before you ask him again. He's only ever seen her for business, now. He answers anyway.   
  
"She...she's brilliant. Efficient, cool, terrifying." (Distant, detached, out of reach.) He twitches the shadow of a smile, but you both know better.   
  
"I have to. I have to go help them, you know that." And then he's gone, and he doesn't come back.   
  
Not whole, anyway.   
  
The suit's mangled, when they find him, run right through past metal, into skin and bone. There's a hole in his sternum, a rib damn near in his lung, and a void in his heart.   
  
He looks cold, frosted in melting snow, unmoving and silent. He looks dead.   
  
Tony never fully wakes, not for the first few weeks. You stay by his bedside as long as you can, holding his hand through the babbled pleas of peace, surrender, closure. (Civil war. I can do this all day. It wasn't him.)   
  
Many people come and visit. They hold his hand, they smooth his sheets, they talk to him. They all leave.   
  
Pepper comes in, after the extensive surgeries, after he's out of the danger zone and moved to the Tower's medbay until he wakes. He never did like hospitals.   
  
Pepper comes in when she can, and does all those things, and none at all.   
  
She's quiet.   
  
You know to excuse yourself, when she arrives. You can see it in her eyes.   
  
Say you lingered at the door, peering through the window to see her tuck a lock of hair behind his ear. Say you saw her smile, soft and sad.   
  
Say you did those things. Say it. Say it out loud. Say it to Tony. But you don't.   
  
It feels much too intrusive anyway.   
  
It takes a while for them to begin again, too many false starts and stuttered pauses. But Pepper stays.

 

_ “I think we needed to find who we were outside each other.” _

 

She smiles again, that sad quirk of a thing.

 

_ “But I think it was too late for that.” _ __  
  
You meet the kid. He's all jittery limbs and nervous energy and never. Stops. Talking. And then you see him smile, smile up at Tony with so much adoration and admiration, and it's like sunshine and you think, aw, you can stay.   
  
You poke at Tony when he ruffles his hair or talks about his churros or hell, signs his permission slips. And when his aunt calls him, he answers on the first ring in terror, and you laugh and laugh and laugh.

 

He smiles down at the boy like sun casting off the clouds, and it makes your heart clench somewhere between happiness and tears.

 

Sometimes Peter catches him like that, with his face all open and soft and lovely, and he ducks his head, smiling into his hands. 

You wonder, not for the first time, if Tony was aware of just how deeply he cared for the boy. 

 

You know Tony, though. You know that if you were to mention it, have it fall into place in his head like dominoes, he’d scatter the pieces and run for the hills. 

It would scare him, to know just how deep he’d dug himself, how it was far too late to cut his losses and run, as he had done so many times before, without having to face the fallout.

 

You’ve seen Peter when he cries. You know Tony wouldn’t be able to bear it. 

You know you couldn’t.

 

Pepper sees them, one day, during the few occasions she’s able to step out for the afternoon. Her body goes lax, eyes warm. Her smile looks almost motherly. 

Tony looks up from the project Peter and he are elbows deep in at something Friday says. 

He’s about to look back when their gazes catch like friction, and Tony’s entire face splits into a gooey beam.

 

You figure it’s safe to start asking again.    
  
“It’s- all of this.” He gestures to the room as a whole, his hand waving over Pepper, past Peter, to his bots, into one of Friday’s cameras. To you. “This. Them. Everything. It’s…It’s nice. You know? It’s nice, not to be- to be alone.” And you know. You know what it’s like. 

 

He doesn’t tell you it’s happiness. It’s been a long time since he’s felt that. He doesn’t tell you it’s happiness, but it’s a near thing. 

 

“It’s…” he trails off, and his gaze lingers over Pepper, snorting at something Peter said. The kid looks up at her like a sunflower turning to the light, trying his best not to laugh. He fails, and the sound of it fills the air. It’s a sweet sticky thing, cloying the room, and Tony can’t help but to grin. He looks at them, looks to you. 

 

_ “You could say it’s a silly sort of hope.”  _

 

_ “Hope?” _

 

_ “Hope that...this will stay. If only for a little while.” _

 

_ It’s going to hurt when it’s over _ . But he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t have to.

 

It does.

 

You catch him, one night, after a sleep mussed Peter is sent back to his aunt (mother) and Tony’s smiling down at the work he left behind. “So?”

He startles, papers scattering. He starts rambling as you bend down to gather them and stack them on a worktable. 

 

“-e’s a good kid, yeah? He’ll outshine us all- he’s just got so many ideas,  _ good  _ ideas, and he’s so smart and kind. Not as smart as me, yeah, one of a kind here, but he’s getting there. The kid’s going places-”

 

“Tony.”

 

He freezes, hands tapping nervously at the table. 

 

“It’s okay.”

 

And he takes a deep breath, looks down, looks up.

 

“He’s… it’s like the sun, when he smiles.” And you wonder when he began to know, when he knew to just answer, rather than wait for you to ask. Maybe he always has. 

“It feels like hope.”

 

His fingers drum a staccato beat, and his eyes find yours with a sudden startling intensity, hands stilling.

 

“He’s the future.”

 

Tony was always looking ahead, building a bridge to tomorrow, longer and higher into the great beyond. He’d do it while drowning in the demons of yesterday. He’d do it through the night and into the morning. Into tomorrow. But it would never be enough. He’d forge a staircase to the sky, to the stars. 

All so they could climb, and eventually, build, farther than he ever could. 

 

And he’d do it all with his feet planted firmly in the present. He looked to the past, too, watched it unfold on a grainy screen in Siberia as his very world tilted on its axis into a dizzying new reality with a click. 

 

No, not a click- a screech. A crunch. A scream. A crack. A wheeze. A whimper, and the bodies left to cool.

 

The clang of metal on bone, bone on metal, metal through bone. 

 

_ Did you know? _

 

Tony was always looking ahead, but he’d twist to see over his shoulder, Peter bounding along behind him till he caught up to walk by his side. He could only hope he’d live to see the (his) kid swing beyond him as he stuttered in the sky. 

The thought made him smile.

 

“His smile is hope and his heart’s the size of New York. He’s the future, and all tomorrow aspires to be.” 

So he builds. He builds for Peter, for Harley, for the young, the old, and everyone somewhere in between. 

 

It’s only after the sunshines and coffees in the rain and ice cream sticky grins begin to pile up do you finally give voice to the one question that’s been rattling in your head all these years. 

 

“Tony.”

“Mm?”

 

“What about- what about yours?”

 

Understanding crests his face, but he tinkers on, and around a mouthful of bolts, says, “My what?” You knock your knee against his, eyes searching.

 

“Your smile, Tony. Not Pepper’s. Not Peter, or Rhodey, or Happy or your gaggle of adopted children.” He squawks at that, several pieces falling from his lips. “-they’re not  _ adopted,  _ I don’t  _ adopt  _ anyone, I don’t know what you’re talking about-”

He’s deflecting. 

 

“Tony.” 

 

And he stops, just like all those months ago. They feel like years. You don’t tell him it’s okay. You don’t have to.

 

He stops, and he looks at you. He looks young, younger, eyes big and wide. 

He looks soft, hair curling at his ears and swooping over his forehead. There’s grease smudged over his nose, and he’s swamped in Rhodey’s MIT sweater. 

 

He looks- lost. As though through remembering how to smile again, he forgot he had one too. 

 

Tony sets down what he’s working on, spits the bits of metal out of his mouth. His gaze shifts around the workshop, like he doesn’t know where to put it. 

Finally they land on his reflection in the glass floor to ceiling windows, giving pause at the sight of himself. 

 

He tries lifting the corner of his lips. Drops them. 

Then he’s flashing through the masks. 

The Stark smirk. The plastic paparazzi beam. The charming grin, ever the magnet at galas and charity functions. The lopsided smile with the barest hint of teeth that sends both women and men swooning in scores. All familiar.

All fake. Finally his face falls, features screwing into a frown.

 

It’s the barest mumble when he speaks, small and resigned.    
“It’s...whatever I need it to be.”

Not what he wants. Not what he feels. Or enjoys, or likes, or loves. 

What he needed it to be. What the world needed it to be.    
  
You cup his face, thumbs stretching the ends of his mouth in a big cheesy grin. He smiles, then, genuine. Shy. 

He whispers a huff of a laugh, impossibly long lashes brushing over his cheeks, dipping his head to look down at his hands.

 

“It’s. Well. It’s you.” 

You smile at that. 

“Oh, Tony.” 

It’s not you. It can’t be you. After all, who even are you? 

 

“Boss, if I may?” Friday’s lilting voice echoes in the quiet space. “Go ahead, Fri.”

 

And all at once the air is bathed in swaths of blue, faces blooming across them in bursts of color and joy. Stolen moments in time, captured forever in high resolution. Silent, short videos play soundlessly, the imagined sound of laughter trickling like water, twinkling like bells. 

 

There’s Pepper, and Rhodey, and Peter and Happy and the bots and anyone and everyone, pictures both candid and cheerful, touching and ridiculous.

 

Pepper, standing at a window as the sun rises over Malibu. 

 

Pepper and Tony, sitting in the grass beneath the trees.

 

Pepper, watching, waiting, as the suit dismantled around him in Stark Tower.

 

Pepper, Rhodey, and Tony laughing in the workshop. 

 

Peter and Ned, whooping as one of their creations skitters to life.

 

Pepper. Rhodey. Peter, and everything and everyone in between.

 

Everything is beautiful and nothing is wrong. And at the center of it all, Tony. 

 

Tony, vibrant and alive. Tony, the lines of his body soft, his smile open. Tony, pictured in roaring laughter. Tony, eyes squinted shut, beam a mile wide. Tony, Tony, Tony.

 

For an eternity, he can do nothing but stare, gaping in shocked awe. 

“Fri?” he croaks, when his hands stop shaking and he stops blinking as though he were trying to fly. 

 

That’s when you realize that dammit, not all these pictures are recent. Not all were taken by Friday, or through the Starkphones of his friends and family. They’re taken by JARVIS. 

 

Shots of the skyline, of the first versions of Iron Man and War Machine, of Pepper and Happy and the bots, slowly fade to sepia tone images with neat, elegant script looping across the bottom. 

 

They depict a tall kind faced man, a woman exuding warmth, and a bright eyed child smiling, gap-toothed and lovely at the both of them. They were taken by Edwin Jarvis, and nothing is wrong, and that’s when he starts to cry. 

 

Your hand finds his, thumb smoothing circles into his skin, the other brushing at the corner of his eye. He hunches in on himself because  _ hell,  _ he’s a  _ grown-ass man _ , and he’s  _ crying,  _ and  _ nothing is wrong.  _

He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, as if to scrub away the tears, the emotion. Your hands fall to your lap, and he’s saying  _ sorry, I’m sorry, oh God what’s wrong with me I’m  _ sorry _ \-  _ and you tell him, “It’s alright. You’re alright.”

 

_ It’s okay. _

 

He leans into your touch as the sniffs abide and the hiccups quiet, and when he’s ready, you ask him again. You ask him about his smile.

 

And he thinks, thinks hard as as he possibly can with his brain branching off into winding endless rivers with every word. He thinks, and you can practically hear the mechanisms grinding in his head. He thinks, and he tells you he’ll get back to you, because of all the thinking that can be thought, he can’t give you an answer.

 

He spends two years; thinking, pocketing smiles and screwing laughs into jars. He opens them on good days and closes them on bad. He hates it, how seeking happiness makes him feel so weak.

 

A thump on the back, a shatter of glass.

_ Chin up, boy. Stark men are made of iron, and iron doesn’t cry.  _

 

The flash of cameras, shouts of dissent.

_ You’re not one for sentiment, are you, Mr. Stark? It’s all flashy cars and the women on them as you watch the money burn. _

 

The forceful removal of BARF, of a rose-tinted past, deluded reality yanked into the bleak of the present.

_ This isn’t healthy, Tony. You’re-you’re a futurist. And you’re drowning in pasts that can never be. No more. _

No more.

 

He’d take the brunt of the world with a smirk and a quip. He took a knife to his heart with anguish and armor. So much so, that, when something other than betrayal and pain trickled in between the cracks, he didn’t know what to do with it. He’s never really felt anything else.

 

He’s not one for sentiment. Is he? Tony laughs, and it sounds like glass breaking.

 

_ “More than you would know.”  _   
  


That was before. You know now, more than he thought you’d ever would. You know, and you cup his cheeks like handling china. 

 

You get your answer as the flow of memories into his private servers lie stagnant and stale. It’s soft and shattered and awful, so awful.

_ “I don’t- I don’t think I can. Not anymore.” _

How can he, when every blink sears with  _ I’m sorry  _ and silence? How can he, when he looks down at his hands, looks at Peter in the dead of night sleeping soundly, solid,  _ there,  _ and sees only ash? 

 

Maybe he can’t. Not yet. 

 

_ “Your smile is everything, Tony.” _

 

But he will.

 

_ “And I’ll do anything to see it again.” _

 

 


End file.
